IA: Amazon makes its biggest investment with US$2.75 billion – 03/28/2024 – Tec

Amazon has committed a further US$2.75 billion (R$13.75 billion) to artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, strengthening its ties with the company as Big Tech’s race to dominate the AI ​​sector intensifies.

The agreement is the largest investment in companies ever made by Amazon and increases its commitment to Anthropic to US$4 billion (R$20 billion). The partnership is one of several struck between AI startups and tech giants over the past year, as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and others bet that strength in generative AI will be their biggest competitive advantage in the coming years.

Amazon initially invested US$1.25 billion (R$6.25 billion) in September last year and had reserved the right to increase this amount to US$4 billion (R$20 billion) before the end of March.

At the same time, Anthropic is separately raising hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capitalists. Taken together, the deals could ultimately provide Anthropic with billions of dollars in capital and credits to use cloud and computing services, valued at more than $18 billion, according to people with knowledge. of the discussions.

Amazon is increasing its bet on Anthropic despite growing investigation by regulators in the US, UK and European Union into the consequences that agreements between big techs and the most prominent AI startups could pose anti-competitive risks.

Microsoft took the lead in the field of generative AI, investing US$13 billion (R$65 billion) in OpenAI, owner of ChatGPT, which triggered the wave of investors on the rapidly developing technology.

Since then, Microsoft has invested in European AI startup Mistral and last week closed a $650 million deal to hire AI firm Inflection’s leadership team and researchers, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.

Anthropic’s deal with Amazon gives the Seattle-based company a well-known partner in AI as it competes for leadership in the sector with Microsoft and Google.

Amazon reiterated on Wednesday that it would be Anthropic’s “primary cloud provider” for critical workloads, which will run on Amazon Web Services. Anthropic will also use Amazon’s internally developed AI computer chips and is working with the cloud provider to develop and improve the hardware, which aims to compete with Nvidia’s chips.

However, the deal does not tie Anthropic exclusively to Amazon’s cloud, as OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft does, and the startup will continue to use Google’s cloud as well. Google has agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic, according to a person with knowledge of that deal.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of researchers who left OpenAI concerned about its commitment to AI security. The San Francisco-based company is considered the most likely challenger to OpenAI’s early dominance in the industry. Its latest model, Claude 3, outperforms OpenAI’s GPT4 in several industries.

The company is selling shares at $30 a share in an attempt to raise cash and computing credits to fund the development of cutting-edge AI models, according to people with knowledge of the deal.

Venture capital investors also expect to commit at least $750 million to the company in a round expected to close in April, according to the people. Most of that total was raised through a special purpose vehicle created by Silicon Valley firm Menlo Ventures, an existing Anthropic investor, they added.

One of Anthropic’s earliest investors was cryptocurrency group FTX, which went bankrupt and has since sold most of its stake in the company as part of the process. The fund owned by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala, agreed to buy a majority stake in FTX for $500 million, according to court documents released last week.